“…the incontestable truth is that America has been built up by optimists, not by pessimists, but by men possessing courage, confidence in the nation’s destiny, by men willing to adventure, to shoulder risks terrifying to the timid.”

We must learn that to enjoy happiness we must conscientiously and continuously seek to spread happiness. Selfishness is suicidal to happiness.

No man can fight his way to the top and stay at the top without exercising the fullest measure of grit, courage, determination, resolution.

Honesty is the cornerstone of character.

Our future and our fate lie in our wills more than in our hands, for our hands are but the instruments of our wills.

The man who has done his level best… is a success, even though the world may write him down a failure.

The bell of public opinion is today making the Morgan-Rockefeller-Vanderbilt class jump. Nor are the strongest of our corporations immune. The railroads have had to jump pretty lively, and certain gigantic industrial combinations are also being put through their paces.

The man without religion is as a ship without a rudder.

It is only the farmer who faithfully plants seeds in the Spring, who reaps a harvest in the Autumn.

The be-all and end-all of life should not be to get rich, but to enrich the world.

Mediocre men wait for opportunity to come to them. Strong, able, alert men go after opportunity.

There is no fun equal to the satisfaction of doing one’s best. The things that are most worthwhile in life are really those within the reach of almost every normal human being who cares to seek them out.

Vitally important for a young man or woman is, first, to realize the value of education and then to cultivate earnestly, aggressively, ceaselessly, the habit of self-education.

Success consists of being and doing, not simply accumulating.

A price has to be paid for success. Almost invariably those who have reached the summits worked harder and longer, studied and planned more assiduously, practiced more self- denial, overcame more difficulties than those of us who have not risen so far.

To make headway, improve your head.

Upon our children-how they are taught-rests the fate-or fortune-of tomorrow’s world.